p by the mutiny of his
Indians and an attempt to murder him. When we met him at Yalahao he had
just returned from his last visit, carrying away his property, and
leaving five dogs tenants of the island. After him came a stranger
occupant than either, being no other than our old friend Mr. George
Fisher, that "citizen of the world" introduced to the reader in the
early part of these pages, who, since our separation in Merida, had
consummated the history of his wandering life by becoming the purchaser
of six leagues, or eighteen miles, of the island, had visited it
himself with surveyors, set up his crosses along the shore, and was
about undertaking a grand enterprise, that was to make the lonely
island of Cozumel known to the commercial world.

[Engraving 57: Island of Cozumel]

Our act of taking possession was unusually exciting. It was an immense
relief to escape from the confinement of the canoa. The situation
commanded a view of the sea, and, barely distinguishable, in the
distance was the coast of Yucatan. On the bank were large forest trees
which had been spared in the clearing, and orange and cocoanut trees
planted by Molas. The place had a sort of piratical aspect. In the hut
were doors and green blinds from the cabin of some unlucky vessel, and
reeving blocks, tar buckets, halliards, drinking gourds, fragments of
rope, fishing nets, and two old hatches were scattered on the ground.
Above all, the first object we discovered, which would have given a
charm to a barren sand bank, was a well of pure and abundant water,
which we fell upon at the moment of landing, and were almost like the
Spanish soldier in the expedition of Cordova, who drank till he swelled
and died. And, besides the relief of a pressing want, this well had a
higher interest, for it assured us that our visit was not bootless. We
saw in it, at the first glance, the work of the same builders with
whose labours on the mainland we were now so familiar, being, like the
subterranean chambers at Uxmal, dome shaped, but larger both at the
mouth and in the interior.

This well was shaded by a large cocoanut tree. We hauled up under it
one of the hatches, and, sitting around it on blocks, had served up the
turtle which had been accomplishing its destiny on board the canoa.
With our guns resting against the trees, long beards, and canoa
costume, we were, perhaps, as piratical-seeming a trio as ever scuttled
a ship at sea. In the afternoon we walked over th